Sunday, December 31, 2006

ongoing notes, December 2006 (end of year special)

I haven’t been avoiding you lately, I swear. I've just been busy lately, what with putting together all the titles for Chaudiere Books 2007 list (including titles by John Newlove, Andrew Suknaski, Decalogue 2: ten Ottawa fiction writers, the Collected Sexanthology & others…), & finishing that book for Arsenal Pulp (Ottawa: The Unknown City), that Open Letterissue I've been editing, as well as the final touches on the third issue of ottawater… working to get a number of above/ground press items made over the next two months as well, so if you haven’t subscribed or resubscribed yet (I've been slowly mailing packages out over the past few days…)… working on a number of reviews as well, essays & the like, & other various things I haven’t had time for lately (you know how it is)…

kumbayahead past reasonable history or 60s tunescome to jaded poet reading his ability as tombed

or jack posts by tucking fliers post midnightthen -- sigh

Vancouver BC: Following his Governor-General's Award winning poetry collection Surrender (2002) is Vancouver poet Roy Miki's There (Vancouver BC: New Star, 2006). The author of a number of other books including the non-fiction Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice (2005), as well as three previous poetry collections, Saving Face: Selected Poems 1976-1988 (1991), Random Access File (1995) & Surrender (2002), he spent years editing West Coast Line magazine, & has also edited work by the late Toronto poet bpNichol, Vancouver writer George Bowering & the late Vancouver poet/artist Roy Kiyooka. Miki'sThere feels less a collection built out of a whole than a series of extended parts, writing poems that respond to the world around him as opposed to being written out of that same world, responding to his own work in the Redress movement, his history in Winnipeg & returning there (his family was moved to the prairies from the coast during the Second World War), a trip to China, & the previous works of Roy Kiyooka, as he begins in the piece "This Side," writing:

This is the unspeakable screen where he sought to protect theinquiries that riddled one's childhood.

He was born in a neighbourhood where the streets, lanes, and foot-worn paths of the park returned on themselves.

The provisions of memory, always on alert for the anomalousregister, cloaked the bone rush of his awakened tensile regions witha notorious green thumb.

It resembled a casual photo seen years later in the multitudinouschambers of a lexicon in crisis.

What it incarnated then – the spooks removed from the tongues incheck – came across the divide as a designer storefront for ripe butmodified melons.

In what was described as a salamander like manoeuvre, even afterprolonged decades, the resonance, or call it the abrasive whiskers,would sneak up on his reveries at the most anticipated of times. Dubit then the installation of the so-called syllabic entourage.

What tissues assumed the audible signed on as compensation forthe displaced get out of childhood free card. Each album cushioningthe aerated passage of family matters enveloped the alleys of hisperegrinations.

I find it interesting, for example, that Miki will work capitals at the beginning of lines but still work the lower-case "i," working a variant, perhaps, on Kiyooka's own sense of "inglish." Working more a series of ongoing occasional than individual collections, Miki's poetry seems instead to be working one large life-long project, accumulating book after slow book.

Often in my writing what seems incoherent will have some internal necessity. I sometimes try to achieve a coherence through the musicality of sequences using internal, slant or end rhyme, assonance or consonance, or by referring back to a concept in many different ways and from different viewpoints, sometimes by using the same sequence over and over as anagrams. Lately I've been obsessed with noise. I find so much of popular music to be banal and irritating. I really feel the need to push for something non-marketable. John Cage's famously loud silent piece 4'33 is an example of a resistance to produced sound as product. If you've seen the movie Pootie Tangthen you've seen an updated version of this idea. Pootie Tang is a character in the movie who recods a song composed of silence. When it is played on a radio station there is the slick, over-produced beat leading into the piece, then silence. Everyone that hears the song, stops what they were busy doing and turns to the radio. It is a powerful moment in a hilarious film about our immersion in media so much so that we only notice it when the flow is interrupted and we come up for air into silence. R. Murray Shaffer conducted research into the gradual increase in urban noise, the increasing presence of abstract noise in our cityscapes. He coined the term"soundscape," but that is no longer enough to contain the noise that inflects our life. It is no longer just noise in sound. Noise is a concept in Information Theory that is used to identify anything which distracts from a signal. This can be something useful such as a cry for help interrupting a conversation, or damaging such as the sound of a jackhammer interrupting a conversation. In both cases, following the guide of Information Theory, the interruption of the conversation is considered noise. In a world where we are inundated by the need for efficiency noise is counterproductive behaviour or activities to a streamlined work experience. Anything that distracts a worker from a task is noise. Coherence functions in a similar manner. Coherence is a function of understanding and I'd like to believe that in some instances my poems can disrupt that understanding long enough to call attention to the plurality andecstasy of noise.

Any lifetime is enormous in symphonic breeze. Plurality, a learnedreprise, draws love from dream of present tense spectacular, where winteris a precondition for the needed healing. Even a clipped flower that surviveson empathy imposes blossom from a crystal vase. The laureate assigned totether faith may improvise new midnight at the moment ashes on the willingforehead fade.

Saturday, December 30, 2006

further thoughts on Glengarry:

The Loyalists who established themselves in Upper Canada came from the south.Many of them made their way from the Mohawk Valley, west of Albany on the Hudson River, where they had settled on land originally acquired by Sir William Johnson. Some were veterans of the French and Indian Wars. Johnson also brought in Highlanders from Inverness-shire and the west of Scotland in an effort to populate the very large territory he had acquired. A group of around 400, led by the tacksmen brothers Allan, Alexander and John MacDonell, sailed in August 1773 on the Pearl from Fort William at the head of Loch Linnhe to New York. There was an outbreak of smallpox on board, and twenty-five children died on the voyage. These were Catholic families, traditionally Jacobite supporters, who saw little future for themselves in Scotland. Their disillusion with Highland landlords at home may have contributed to their adherence to King George when the Thirteen Colonies rebelled. The Mohawk Valley, like other Highland communities in America, responded to the call for recruits for King George's American regiments.

Scotland's Glengarry lies north of Fort William, reaching west towards Knoydart, still one of the most wild and remote parts of the West Highlands. It was MacDonell country. When in 1784 the Mohawk Valley people made their way north they took the name with them, and where they settled along the upper St Lawrence River became Glengarry County. The Loyalist settlers were joined over the next few decades by friends and family, as Highland emigration intensified. They arrived in 1785 and 1786, the latter group a substantial migration of families evicted from Knoydart to make way for sheep. Upper Canada, they believed, would enable them to maintain a traditional Gaelic community. As was recognized at the time, this was not an isolated event. 'These people, when once they settle in Canada, will encourage others, as they are now encouraged by some friends before them. They will form a chain of emigration.' This is exactly what happened. More came in 1790. As the struggle for survival in Scotland's Glengarry intensified, a local priest, Alexander MacDonell, encouraged migration to factory jobs in Glasgow. When this source of livelihood also failed he came up with the idea of the Glengarry Fencibles (fencible regiments were raised to defend home territory), which saw service in Ireland, aCatholic regiment in action against Catholic Irish dissidents. In 1802 it was disbanded, leaving the men with no means of support. Alexander MacDonell conceived of a plan to enable them to emigrate to Upper Canada. He raised money from landowners and industrialists to pay their passage: 800 joined the Glengarry settlement. By 1806 there were over 10,000 Catholic Highlanders from Scotland's Glengarry area in Canada's Glengarry, and the exodus continued. 'Go not to Glengarry, if you're not a Highlandman,' commented John MacTaggart in an 1829 guide.-- Jenni Calder. Scots in Canada. Edinburgh Scotland: Luath Press Limited, 2003

Finally, a picture with Edmund Hardy in London England in September 2006 (lots younger than I thought he would be); notice the picture of the Queen Mother in the background; everyone knows that famous shot of her waiting for a pint that took too long, so she got it herself. Apparently she did it in one of a chain of pubs around London; we happen to be in another of same chain, right near where the MI-5 building is (wherever the hell that is; I preferred the tv show). Note the clever t-shirt I picked up while there (got one for my kid, too). More pics to follow, probably.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

another christmas in old glengarry

Very little blogging lately, since I’m full-time finishing Ottawa: The Unknown City for Arsenal Pulp Press [see my previous post on such here]; the book is scheduled for fall 2007, so I actually have to be finishing the thing in January or February. Anything you might know out there that I should be putting in?

I recently found my copy of the certificate from The Ottawa Citizen, proof that I survived the record snow-fall in Ottawa (etcetera) on March 21, 1971 (I was a year & a week old at the time). Apparely my mother’s father got a stack of them for us, since he was celebrating his 25th year as a line type operator & mechanic at the paper around then. I don’t remember the snow (but I do remember the ice we had a few years later for Christmas: 1974, maybe?), but I’ve had this thing around (obviously) for years (& haven’t even lost it yet). Working to find out more information from the newspaper on such; was there an equivalent from the ice storm? Also, apparently, my book needs more "wierd murders"and other such that you’d never find in newspapers or other more polite city-related materials; something the other books have that mine so far lacks. Suggestions?

Stephen Brockwell recently gave me a cd of a pile of photographs from our various trips over the past couple of years (I'll post some soon, when I'm not on my father's eastern Ontario dial-up), including of some of our (more polite, ahem) adventures in New York City with Clare Latremouille launching groundswell: the best of above/ground press 1993-2003(why only the one photo from such?) [see my post from such here], Toronto in 2004 (the second of two combined ECW/Talon launches we were involved in), England & Wales in August/September of this year, & Prince George in early November. Why are so many of them blurry? I would be terrible at filming porn with this unsteady hand...

To dwell between the snowy fastnessand the ice-locked sea, in a city of blondes.

One must have heard the existential scream,hands over ears, the huge Os of mouth and eyes.

Know it can begin with nothing more extremethan the flat's creaky floors, the old radiator ticking.

A fragile ecosystem: the furless, burrowing heartand the Allen key of the mind.

Eventually, one might acquire a taste for hardcorepornography and cod roe paste in squeeze tubes.

Held hostage in the bank vault of winter,the captive will identify with the captor.

However peacefully it seems to fall,there is suppressed violence in the snow. (p 46)

Based on what McOrmond seems to be working toward, structurally, with his poems, he has created himself a series of difficult goals, needing to make the poems so tight that quarters bounce off them, yet not all of them do. There is a looseness to the line that McOrmond doesn’t seem comfortable with (which could be an interesting direction to play with), causing his poems, half the time, to not yet get to that tighter place he aims toward. Still, when they do, they sing, and many of them work the ghazal-like feature that so many of the QWERTY kids have been known to work, including Andy Weaver, from his collection Were The Bees (Edmonton AB: NeWest Press, 2005)[see my review of same here]. While I was in Toronto in November, I was fortunate enough to hear McOrmond read not once but twice, including this poem, another example of his tight twists and turns, without an extraneous line or gesture:

Self-portrait as the middle-aged fool

You've come a long waypast quotidian drunkenness, past caringwhether you left the stove on, the whereaboutsof your father's deer rifle, loadedwith one in the chamber. No reason to hurry homenow that everyone but the dog has gone, and yetwhere else would you go? Past last call,throwing up in the back of the cab, and laterthe dry heaves, you arrive at this claritylike lucid dreaming. You have reached a placewhere Heidegger makes sense, and stumblingacross the lawn, you can smell it: first snow,not the end, but how an endingis supposed to feel. In the yard, the mapleshave made their arrangements, scatteringsepia photographs of themselveson the sidewalk, and the onlysuitable gesture is to weep. (p 14)

'What is 'Pataphysics?' shouted the cover of the Evergreen Reviewfor May 1960. It has continued to shout the question ever since from the dusty racks of second hand bookstores as one of the more eagerly sought after old issues dreams, screams, and moulders.

So what, you might ask, would constitute a Canadian 'Pataphysics? Not a 'pataphysics at all but rather a perinducement of the superinducement, nothing less than a Canadian '"Pataphysics." Is this term, to begin with then, self-contradictory and/or, in its self-contraditoriness, self-explanatory?

The distinction is subtle: from elision to quotation through a superinducement on elision. Within the ordinarities of elision the apostrophe places 'pataphysics outside the domain of the Origin the four letters' roots (the nature of pata according to one Canadian scholar, and literary agent to Dr. R.W. Sanderson), is to be detected in the port-manteau confluence of "meta" (beyond) and "para" (beside) -- beside and beyond, beyond and beside the topography of its telos. Hence, its neighbourliness to several zones of 'potential genesis: a clinical history of 'patanoia; the exact locate of 'patadise; the literary ontogenesis of the 'patadox. But the status of the elision? For the beginnings of the 'pataphysics are in that slide into and beside and beyond the incontrovertible assertion that 'it' commences nowhere.

Now here (in there) are the parameters (perhaps we might risk the 'parameters) of a science inscribed within the property of the apostrophe, of the comma inverted and announcing itself as the science of the general inversion and the non-art of the absent.

In the Canadian contribution is that erasure of 'this' elision and the institution of a science of the perpetually open. A shift from/to quotation in the doubling of the elide, a doubled inversion and an inverted doubling.

Canadian "pataphysics gives us then quotation, and quotation (as Science always is) of the given we do not understand with emendations that constitute our explanation. If "Pataphysics is 'the science of imaginary solutions' and the source of answers to questions never to be posed, then "Pataphysics (the open quotation of a double elision) will be 'the literature of all imaginary sciences.' As such it will constitute the "patasignificant advance of a field of non-signification, moving us closer to (and hence by the transcendental law of the "patadox further away from) its origin(s). Hence the Science of the never-ending, never-commencing discourse. Perhaps the "parole? Hence. Nichol's early terminology 'PROBABLE SYSTEMS' or McCaffery's acronymic NRT. (pp 7-8)

How, from then, does Sharon Harris work her own "Pataphysical inquiries? How did she get to a point where she is asking the questions almost no one else can remember? In her "NOTES ON THE TEXT," she writes that "Fun W/ 'Pataphysics gives definite answers to your unanswerable poetic questions and offers all the unsolicited writing advice you will never follow. For ages zero to aethernity." Based on the Toronto Research Group text, there have probably been few that have even moved since to explore such considerations, with the most obvious researcher being Toronto writer Steve Venright; as much as I like Harris' 'Pataphysical inquiries (notice she uses only the single instead of the suggestion of Canadian double), and I do like them very much, why do I want her to go so much further? Will she go further?

34. THE GREAT CANADIAN SOUND POEM

If you have dry, frizzy hair, wear glasses and have a pine tree youcan lean against the next time the Northern Lights are in thesky, you might hear some Canadian sound poetry.

How? Your hair and the needles of the pine tree vibrate to thevery low frequency sounds given off by the lights. With luck,your ears will turn these vibrations into sound poems. Yourglasses help boost the sound as they transfer the vibrationsdirectly to the bones in your head.

Not that she hasn’t attempted that further push, as I think even her poetry underestimates itself; how can anyone not love any collection of anything where the page numbers are listed in binary code? I must say I very like this book, and Harris seems one of the few writers existing in the Toronto poetic that seems to be interested in exploring the line between the conceptual art practices of Christian Bök (perhaps the only conceptual artist in Canada working with poetry), and more "traditional" avant-garde writers such as Stephen Cainand angela rawlings. The only equivalent I could see also working that line would be Steve Venright himself; Darren Wershler-Henry, on the other hand, crosses that line regularly, to work his various projects, but doesn’t seem to explore the line itself in the same kind of way. Is there a difference?

Edmonton AB: I've been thinking for years that those kids at the Olive Reading Series (now in their new location; check out Sharon Thesen reading for them on December 12 at Hulbert's Cafe, 7601-115 Street) should offer subscriptions or something. Now in their seventh year, the Olive Reading Series runs (during the school year) a monthly reading series, publishing a chapbook by the featured reader in a handout edition of 100 copies. While I was there (reading from my own new chapbook, October), I got a small stack of recent Olive titles, including Alice Major'sMazama Ash (September 13, 2005), Shawna Lemay's Forest of Disappearances (October 11, 2005) and Jason Christie's Like Wolves (April 11, 2006). How else can those of us on the outside get copies?

Cub Babble

River and smoke, crisp mist floats from our mouths, andthen hangs suspended in mid-air, an emblem of what wesaid; the edges are necessarily foggy. Our eyes pierce anycloud or darkness. Our call reveals any distance. We growinto our warmth. We shed the river and run through smokethe same colour as our fur. We disappear in the fall. Oureyes loll periphery into a uniform blankness. We've becomewolves. Our words have become like wolves. (Jason Christie)

To find out more about the Olive Reading and/or chapbook series, email T.L. Cowan at tcowan@ualberta.ca

Winnipeg MB: While in Winnipeg, Karen Clavelle gave me a copy of three days in Spain (Winnipeg MB: Atelier 78, 2005), a small chapbook she produced. As the colophon reads, "A Collectors Edition of one hundred books created to commemorate celebratory meetings of surrounding Canadays at the University of Lleida, Catalunya, Spain, 26, 27, 28 May, 2005."

Myth : true and false

the prairies are flatthe prairies are agricultural lands bestsuited to the growing of cereal grainsthe prairies are a vast drylands that form a landbridge between theCanadian Shield on the East and the Rockies on the Westthere are no trees on the prairiesit is always windy on the prairiesthe prairies are somehow younger than the rest of the world (Karen Clavelle)

Those Winnipeg folk seem very adept at making connections in various parts of Europe, as Dennis Cooley, Robert Kroetsch and others have been spending various summers teaching Canadian literature in Germany for years. A lovely little chapbook, it includes writing various participants of the weekend, such as Nela Bureu Ramos, Karen Clavelle, Dennis Cooley, Dolors Collellmir, Gordon Collier, Allison Funk, Gene Walz, Dawne McCance, Robert Kroetsch and Mertxe Lasierra.

Ruined

That night a stranger walking down the roadwould take her for a woman weeding late—that's all, she thought, all, all the timeI'm breaking, can't anyone hear my heart?At that, she snapped a plant off stem and budto fling away. Another. Pepper, stalksof corn. Raked spinach out in handfuls. Crushedit underfoot. What when the sun rose wouldhe say to the ruin? Couldn’t know—alone—far from here by morning—she could onlyimagine the look she'd carry like a cameoinside. Opening to his face long afterthis night. She'd leave her lover a keepsake, too,a tale to tell to bookish friends of his.A version, they'll think, of one they've knownall along. This garden he'd remember her by. (Allison Funk)

To inquire about this or any further Atelier 78 publications, email Karen Clavelle at umclavel@gmail.com

Tokyo, Japan: On arriving home, I found a contributor copy of NOON: Journal of the Short Poem, issue 4 in my mailbox, with poems by a whole pile of people, including Andrea Strudensky and Geoffrey Hlibchuk, Hirahata Seito, Marlene Mountain, Elizabeth Robinson, Sheila E. Murphy, Christophe Casamassima, Shin Yu Pai, Patrick So, John Parsons and piles of others. A lovely small edition, the poems included exist without names attached (a list with table of contents exists at the end), so each small moment, small gesture can be experienced without the baggage of names. Wrecking that, here are two poems from the collections I'll credit:

Locution mimes what is already in the head, or the invasivesunshine deems a minute of your time to loosenpreconception. If hurting is for fully formed intolerance, thenthe elements are fixed as minds can be resistant. Outer edgesonce embraced turn thoughtful, or the defining surfaces returnto point of something. High then low as if a flicker of the candlelater on, some gorgeous roan to mean more things are possible. (Sheila E. Murphy)

To find out more about NOON(submissions will be considered between April and July 2007 for issue 5), write Minami Motomachi 4-49-506, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-0012, Japan or email noonpress@mac.com

Providence RI: The only thing good about Janet Inksetter closing her Annex Books store was the fact that I was able to get a whole stack of books I wouldn’t have been able to afford otherwise, including two from Burning Deck: one from David Miller (who co-hosted my reading in London England) and Marjorie Welish's The Windows Flew Open (1991). I know very little about either publisher or author (I think the only other Burning Deck title I have is a Cole Swensen), but I am enjoying this very much. Here's a poem from the collection; hopefully I can get more titles from Burning Deck, and perhaps even see, somehow somewhere, just what else Welish has been up to…

WARM AIR

Denied flirting boisterously beyond the window,here is a page of the abolished view,

figures movingas if installed in a literary light,

the warm air deceptive,superimposed on the imperceptibly villainous street

which caused you to accelerateand skid into a snow bank.

"I dream I see you superimposed"as quoted space, the lace abolishing the scene

like falsehood seen through frost.As quoted above

the curtain at flood tide, through whichthe idea of the Pyrénées. We see figures moving,

Although he knew the Beats, and they him, Brautigan always insisted he was not a part of their literary movement. Contemporary literary opinion supports this contention, seeing Brautigan, when his writing catapulted him to international fame in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as the writer best representative of the emerging counterculture.At the time of his death, however, in 1984, Brautigan was largely ignored or, worse, negated by critics and pundits who then trivialized his contribution to American literature. (p 1-2)

Brautigan saw himself and often referred to himself as a humorist. That is a designation not much used about anyone anymore, since everybody in the whole nation has become a comic. But it has been a rare thing when an artist has identified with any tradition in this century. There is a distant similarity between Brautigan and Twain. It consists almost solely in a natural innocence in regarding the evil disposition of mankind. But whereas Twain's treatment of the condition is streaked with acid intelligence, Brautigan's is amazingly tolerant, if not gleeful, and resembles an anthropologist's understanding more than that of a literary man. (Edward Dorn, pp 103-4)

Moving from the critical to the personal and back very easily (sometimes within the same piece), the collection includes pieces such as "I Remember Richard Brautigan," where poet Joanne Kyger writes a series of reminiscences, starting:

I remember meeting Richard Brautigan. It is the spring of 1957. I meet Richard and Ron Loewinsohn at a gallery opening. They tell me they are poets. They are very young, like 19 or 20. Ron likes Keats and I make fun of him. Keats is so old fashioned! I give Richard my address and he comes by the next night so we can go to dinner, only he does not have much money so it means I take him. He shows me his basement in Chinatown on Washington Street where the dishes cost 49 cents each. We have a modest dinner and then go back to Grant Avenue where we run into Mike Nathan, a very young artist who has painted a picture in City Lights Bookstore's front window of a policeman and a priest standing side by side and looking very similar. Mike wants to show me North Beach, but Richard is not happy with this and spends the rest of the evening lurking up and down upper Grant Avenue a half block behind us. He maintains this somewhat moody distance during the next two years when I see him from a distance in North Beach. He marries Ginny [Virginia Alder, 1957] (later Ginny Aste) and after a time I recall her sitting with Jack Spicer in The Place and saying, "The hardest thing I had to do was give Richard back my wedding ring." The relationship was over [they separated in 1962; divorced in 1970] but they had a daughter, Ianthe [Ianthe Elizabeth Brautigan; born 1960].

What this collection accomplishes is a larger portrait of the late American writer, moving from reminiscences of his early life and writings, to explorations and longer, critical essays on various aspects of his writings, as well as a piece by the founder and former curator of The Brautigan Library (a reference from the novel The Abortion). The book even includes pieces that show frustration and even anger at what Brautigan let himself turn into in later years, the "dark Brautigan" that one author refers to, the one who ended up telling his friends around both his residences that he was going to be in the other, before he turned a gun on himself in 1984, to be found in his kitchen weeks later. There aren't that many books on Richard Brautigan out there in the world, and even Keith Abbott's memoir of his experiences with Brautigan, Downstream from Trout Fishing in America has been out of print for so long that it's become a rare collectable; will someone ever think to reprint it? One of the funniest pieces has to be Abbott's own, in his "In the Riffles with Richard: A Profile of Richard Brautigan" (originally published in California Fly Fisher) writing:

After viewing Richard's eccentric collection of trout memorabilia, Price, Richard and I went out on what was to become the first of a long series of adventures in San Francisco. It was fitting that this first afternoon's high point involved the romance and art of fishing.

Richard had cast Price as his hero Lee Mellon in the novel, A Confederate General From Big Sur, and while he retold his adventures with Price, such as silencing a pond full of frogs with two well-placed alligators, my first reaction upon reading the novel was "This is hilarious, but this Richard guy only told a fourth, at best, of the loony tune life of Price."

Here was a guy who ran a moving service called Blue Whale Movers, a guy whose constant need for new phone service (born from a firm belief that utility companies had more than enough money and didn’t need his cash) caused his new phones to be listed under William Bonney, Delmer Dibble, Rufus Flywheel, Jesse James, and Commander Ralph G. Gore, and a guy whose first act upon renting a new house was to chainsaw all the interior walls, "because a man needs space to breathe." (p 17)

After years of nothing new, save the fact that his books, at least, were being kept in print through a series of omnibus collections, 1999 also saw the publication of a collection of Brautigan's writing from his 20s, The Edna Webster Collection of Undiscovered Writings, and a year later, a reissue of his last novel, An Unfortunate Woman, as well as a moving tribute by his daughter Ianthe, the memoir You Can't Catch Death: A Daughter's Memoir, writing about being the only child of a famous writer who killed himself, and discovering not only her place in his life, but finding and meeting his own parents he had cut himself off from so very many years before. With a writer such as Brautigan, it gets far too easily to focus on the man himself, moving further into his own suicide, that it often overlooks not only the earlier versions of who he was, but overshadows the writing; what makes this volume particularly interesting is that it focuses on all of the above, creating a larger overview for future readers and even future critics to move out from. Will there be a selected letters? Will there be a selection of Brautigan's non-fiction pieces? Have the omnibus' run their course? But I'll let Brautigan himself get the last word, from his collection Loading Mercury With A Pitchfork (1976):

CAROL THE WAITRESSREMEMBERS STILLPart 6

Yes, that's the table where Captain Martinsat. Yes, that one. By the window.He would sit there alone for hours ata time, staring out at the sea. He alwayshad one plain doughnut and a cup of coffee.I don’t know what he was looking at.

To put it bluntly: Don McKay has got in Night Field, his seventh poetry collection, some dozens of passages that do for me what I have pictured myself as so greatly desiring and so rarely finding in anybody's craft or sullen art -- anybody's anywhere. There are enough such passages that (and here I come finally to the downside) I wonder why he ever stumbles, weakens, flaws them in the way that he quite often does.

There's hardly a poem without some good news in it, some lyrical moment you want to last for a long while; but often the poet doesn’t seem to trust his own lovely couple of lines, his already-achieving epiphany; we find him trying to nail it down, trying to make apparent to us what was so subtly rendered already. (p 55)

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Tour notes, day twenty-six; November 26, Toronto ON

The morning on a sad note; opening the email first thing to Mark Frutkin telling me that Riley Tench had died the day before; I remember a piece by Robert Creeley a few years ago, realizing that the past few years (at that point) of his careers had been predominantly spent writing obits; is this what happens eventually to us all? (If we're lucky to live that long...) Worked to get emails for Richard Harrison (Calgary) and Maggie Helwig (Toronto) to at least let them know (etc), since they knew him from the Peterborough days...

Otherwise, a quiet day reading comic books in Andy's apartment, including The Ultimatesand Spider-Man: Blue; Andy has a whole bunch of Jeph Loeb stuff, which is extremely interesting, and the same guy partly responsible for the Smallville and Heroes teevee shows, which I quite like. Saw the 3pm showing of Borat at the theatre; oh my... I admire anyone who is willing to commit to a joke that fully; an extremely brave actor/writer, fer sure... it was great but not as outrageously great as we had expected. Is it a matter of this cultural criticism we all expected something that isn't spoken of inside the US, but a critique we as Canadians are already mostly aware of? I wondered if it simply didn't shock us as much as the American media claims it shocks them...

After the reading, drinks with Ross, Sutherland, LoveGrove and Sharon Harris; after everyone else left, Sharon and I drinks for another two hours or more. Geez. Wonderful to be able to spend time with her and get a good sense of conversation; had conversation about all sorts of things, a small tiny fraction of which was her new poetry collection brand new from The Mercury Press; might even have lunch with her and Stephen Cain tomorrow...

Should I even mention the homeless man that offered me a hug on Church Street if I gave him money? Or that he hugged me anyway unless I'd give him money? Sharon finally gave him a dollar... apparently I'm very huggable...

Tour notes, day twenty-seven; November 27, Toronto ON

Today wandering around Toronto just a little bit, just a little bit. Went to the Future Bakery on Bloor Street (near Bathurst) to get work done; where I always go in Toronto to get work done, half between Coach House Books and Annex Books. Ended up seeing fiction writer Leon Rooke there with University of Toronto MA creative writing student Rebecca Rosenblum, as apparently Rooke her mentor for the book of short stories she's working on; one just appeared in the next issue of Exile, and another forthcoming in The New Quarterly. He says her work is great; how could I not believe him?

Speaking of Coach House, went by to visit with Coach House Queen Alana Wilcox, and to see what the newish titles are. Got very good advice from her and poet and ECW Press editor Michael Holmes today (called him earlier in the day) on things related to our Chaudiere Books stuff. Always good to talk to either of them about anything, but would like both of them to publish more; I know Holmes has another poetry manuscript, and Wilcox's first novel from The Mercury Press a few years ago was quite lovely (everyone should own one). Will there ever be another? Will this happen to me too, now that I'm publishing things? I hope not...

Last night drinks for a bit with Weaver and Cain; haven't seen Cain in a while, so good to catch up, however brief. Apparently he's finishing a novel these days (although, who isn't); got a copy of Andy Brown's brand new Insomniac Press novel from him, which is pretty cool.

Might wander over to Annex Books again; afraid of spending money there I might not have...

Tour notes, day twenty-nine; November 29, Toronto ON

Last night; reading was grand, had fun hearing all three (mostly); Shin and McOrmond were great! McOrmond even better than on Friday; maybe it was just the lack of 38 hour train for me to pay attention? He had some ghazals I think I quite liked. Shin, too, who I haven't heard read in a few years. Got to spend time before the reading with David Clink (who has a first poetry collection forthcoming) and Diana Fitzgerald Bryden, which was pretty cool. Apparently she has a novel we're not allowed to talk about. Hmmmmmmmm. A lot of that going around... Cain too, hey.

At the Future Bakery on Bloor Street, saw Jim Munroe and friend, making a short film; felt very embarassed, didn't recognize him. I actually thought he looked too young to be Jim Munroe; felt very foolish, really.

Otherwise, just read a bunch of books during the day and scribbled some things in my notebook. At the Art Bar, saw Mary Elizabeth Grace of all people, who I haven't seen in moons and moons; she read in Ottawa at the whiplash poetry festival I organized back in 1996, when a whole slew of poets stayed in my little house on Rochester Street; meeting her today for coffee at that Future Bakery before she has to go back to work. Apparently a novel in the works (what, another one?) and some bluegrass music (I'd like to inquire more about that...).

Called cousin Erin a few times and kept getting her husband Wayne, who(m) I quite like. Again, always the problem, our schedules are completely opposite when I'm in town, working evenings and weekends, the only time they seem to be home. It seems to take five years just to visit with them (luckily I don't give up easily). Erin's father, my mother's younger brother, apparently entering a gated community with his wife; what? He's barely 65 (actually born in 1942). Is shovelling snow that difficult? But what do I know...

Perhaps the main reason I end up staying with certain people; the only way I know I'll end up seeing them. Prefer my days to be free to wander around, get work done, that sort of thing. Evenings: what?

On the way back home from the Art Bar, a last drink at that Fox & whatever right near where Weaver lives, at St. Clair and Yonge; if I lived here, I think I would completely make it my local. Made me miss my Pubwells, which I hope to get into by Thursday night... And was all that fog/smog outside that last night Toronto a regular thing? That doesn't seem right.

Otherwise, tonight my last night here afore I get back home, so Weaver and I doing something somewhere, maybe calling McOrmond and Tierney etcetera to see what's what. Maybe Cain too, even.

Later: met up with that lovely Mary Elizabeth Grace for coffee at that Future Bakery (apparently she's doing bluegrass stuff these days, which is pretty cool), and Nathaniel G. Moore wandered through; he just quit his job today at Indigo. What next? He has a poetry collection in April with Pedlar Press, which is pretty cool. Will they ever get a website?

On the way back to Andy's, accordian player in the subway playing a version of "You Are Like A Hurricane" by Neil Young. Very strange.

Drinks later on with Andy and Kelly Weaver, Steve McOrmond and his wife (I can't remember her name; what the hells wrong with me?) who told me they wanted me to move to Toronto cuz I'm so much fun (wouldn't it be cheaper for them to move to Ottawa?) and Matthew Tierney (Cain was home parenting so Sharon could go out...). Lots of open discussion/argument about poetry and reviewing and poetry and poetry battles and all sorts of things. Isn't it great to have a discussion with folk not always on the same page but who are willing to listen as well as argue, and still have a beer after/during? Most things would be solved if things could be figured out that way. I hate the poetry battles; refuse to participate in most of them (but for that piece on poetics.ca, and even then I wanted to keep it out of "battle" mode...).

Late late late getting back in. Ugh. So late.

Tour notes, day thirty; November 30, Toronto to Ottawa ON

Will be nice to get home. Will be nice to be home.

I hate that I have a funeral to go to on Saturday. At least I'll be back at Pubwell's by tonight...

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

above/ground press, 2007 subscriptions

For those who have been waiting, I am doing a large mailout in December (once I'm back from this grand tour); otherwise, 2007 above/ground press subscriptions are now available for $40 (outside Canada, $40 US), including chapbooks, asides + broadsheets, drop magazine, STANZAS magazine (for long poems/sequences) + The Peter F. Yacht Club (our writer's group magazine). The next issue of STANZAS features a poem by Margaret Christakos, and the next issue of The Peter F. Yacht Club is a Calgary special edited by Laurie Fuhr.

$200 for 8 sessions. 7pm to 9pm. for information, contact rob mclennan at rob@track0.com or 613 239 0337; an eight week poetry workshop, the course will focus on workshopping writing of the participants, as well as reading various works by contemporary writers, both Canadian & American. the end-goal of the course will be a collective chapbook publication. participants should be prepared to have a handful of work completed before the beginning of the first class, to be workshopped.